Tower and Town, September 2021

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The Litfest Golding Speaker - Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is coming to the Literature Festival as our Golding Speaker. She writes in Turkish and English and has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels with her newest book being The Island of Missing Trees which has just been published.

Elif was born in Strasbourg in 1971 but moved with her mother to Ankara to live with her grandmother when her parents separated. She says that living in a matriarchal environment has been a great influence on her. She then had a fairly nomadic life living in Amman. Istanbul and Madrid before teaching in America, finally moving to London in 2013, where she now lives with her Turkish journalist husband and two children.

As well as being a writer and academic, she is an activist for women’s rights, minority rights, freedom of speech, mysticism and other issues relating to global politics with a number of these becoming part of her stories.

This is a glimpse into some of her best known novels

The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) takes place in California and Istanbul and addresses the subject of the Armenian Genocide. Elif was prosecuted in Turkey for this but fortunately wasn’t convicted.

The Forty Rules of Love (2009) reveals the unfulfilled life of Ella in Massachusetts whose life changes when she reads the manuscript of a book about the 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi and the dervish Shams of Tabriz and his forty rules of love. Many of these provide answers or suggest ways as to how we could perhaps deal with situations in life in the present day.

Honour (2012) focusses on an honour killing in a Kurdish village, opening up a debate about family love, freedom and the role of women and men in society.

The Architects Apprentice (2013) is about a boy who travelled to Constantinople with his elephant in 1540 and became the apprentice to Sinan, the Sultan’s architect, responsible for many of the most famous buildings in the city.

10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. It tells the story of a sex worker in Istanbul who is murdered and the five social outcasts who were her cherished friends. It is also full of evocative scenes, the scents and flavours of Turkey and wonderful friendships.

I am now waiting to read her latest book, The Island of the Missing Trees, which takes place in 1974 in Cyprus where two teenagers from opposite sides – one Turkish and Muslim and the other Greek and Christian – meet secretly in an inn. A fig tree growing through the tavern roof is witness to their covert meetings. War breaks out and the teenagers are separated. Decades later in north London, 16 year old Ada tries to untangle the secrets and silences of the past. The only concession she has to the land of her ancestors is the fig tree in their garden.

The Golding Event is sponsored each year by William Golding Limited. This event can be seen on the Big Screen in the Town Hall on Friday 1st October at 7.30pm or on line at home.

Virginia Reekie